For those unfamiliar with the encyclopedia, it is a guide to Jewish genealogy resources online, covering over 200 countries, over 80 regions (in Canada, Poland, UK and US), and in Poland roughly 1,000 towns. At launch, the resources for those 1,000 Polish towns added up to over 10,000 resources, while the country and region-level resources added up to about 1,200 resources. As of last night, we passed 13,000 total resources, so an increase of nearly 2,000 resources since last year. For more information on the encyclopedia and how it works, see About the Encyclopedia.

There’s still a lot that can be added to the encyclopedia. Adding the city-level resources to more countries is a huge task. Historical regions is another area where I want to expand into, grouping together resources for former territories such as Galicia, Courland, and the Pale of Settlement. Another area I want to expand into is non-geographic topics, such as names, rabbinical genealogy, Sephardi genealogy, etc. Available time is my scarcest resource, however. The same month I launched the encyclopedia I was elected President of the Israel Genealogy Research Association, and I started a new job as well. Add to that four children under the age of ten, and it’s amazing I’ve managed to update the site at all.

Overall though, I’m proud of what I managed to put together and what I’ve been able to add over the past year. It’s a great starting point for those looking for Jewish genealogy resources, and makes it easy to see at a glance what is available for the area from which one’s family originated. I use it myself whenever I am researching a particular location, and thousands of others are using it every month.

If you have suggestions for new resources, please send them to me. The best way to do so is to go to the topic you want to add a resource to, and click on the Add a Resource link at the bottom of the page. If you have a suggestion for ways to improve the site, please post a comment on the Improve the Site page.

Lastly, if you’re reading this now, go to the main page and click on some random countries and see what Jewish genealogy resource are available. Visit sites you’ve never seen before. Maybe you’ll be inspired to create new resources for areas that you know about, so you can share your knowledge with other researchers around the world.

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B&F: Jewish Genealogy & More

The award winning home of Jewish genealogy articles, forms, information, news, insight, resources, and more. Over 25,000 resources in the B&F Compendium of Jewish Genealogy. Published since 2010 by Philip Trauring.

Over 25,000 resources for pursuing your Jewish genealogy research in over 200 countries and territories.